The Internet's divided right now about an article written by Katie Way in babe. "I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life" is the story of Grace (name changed to protect her privacy), a twenty-three year old woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Ansari during their date. If you haven't read the article, you should do that now and then come back here.

I'm positive I'm not the only person who's sharing their opinion about this article, but I want to share it from what might be an entirely different perspective.

I've never been sexually assaulted.

The more I talk to friends and read stories online, I realize that I am in the minority of women.

Some people are saying that Grace's story is just a normal crappy date and that it happens all the time to women. Other people are saying that this is really, truly sexual assault.

"I have had my fair share of what I'd call "crappy dates." And what I call crappy dates looks an awful lot like what Grace calls sexual assault. It's like we went on the same dates, wrote down the same details, and told two very different stories...

"If you got to choose a narrative for your life, which cut would you pick? The one where Clarice descends into cannibalistic hell and fights for her life? Or the one where she's caught in a jaunty love triangle with a couple of quirky gents?

"And that's the thing: we do get to pick how to decide to tell our stories, at least to ourselves. I've dated a few Dr. Lecters, and like Clarice Starling I escaped with a few tears, a few shivers of disgust, and a few stories that I rarely tell. I decided not to call those encounters assault. I decided to make those nights the bad-date montage in act one of the story of my happy life.

"That's how I moved forward.

"Grace's story is common. It's so common that I don't have to imagine it because I remember it. I laugh about it without smiling. It's the story of so much bad sex. And when I hear that bad sex described as a sexual assault, it forces me to reexamine my own history. And see, I just started feeling strong again."

I've never had a "crappy date" either.

Ideally, we should believe people who say they've been sexually assaulted, even if the assault looks something like Grace's story. But there are a lot of people denying that this was sexual assault, including women who have had the exact same experience. I haven't had the same experience, and I'm on the outside looking in. So if you won't believe the women with the crappy date experience--and you really, really should believe them--then please listen to me:

Grace was sexually assaulted.

"When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’” She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him."

Sexual Assault: generally refers to any crime in which the offender subjects the victim to sexual touching that is unwanted and offensive.

Grace said "Whoa, let's relax, let's chill" and Ansari resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same to him. His sexual touching was unwanted. She told him to relax. He didn't. He kept going.

"Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”"

Again, she'd already told him to slow down, and he proceeded to move her hand to his genitals, even after she moved her hand away. His sexual touching was unwanted.

"She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw....”

"Grace says she spent around five minutes in the bathroom, collecting herself in the mirror and splashing herself with water. Then she went back to Ansari. He asked her if she was okay. “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said....

“I just remember looking in the mirror and seeing him behind me. He was very much caught up in the moment and I obviously very much wasn’t,” Grace said. “After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this. And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”

"They got dressed, sat side by side on the couch they’d already “chilled” on, and he turned on an episode of Seinfeld. She’d never seen it before. She said that’s when the reality of what was going on sank in. “It really hit me that I was violated. I felt really emotional all at once when we sat down there. That that whole experience was actually horrible.”

While the TV played in the background, he kissed her again, stuck his fingers down her throat again, and moved to undo her pants. She turned away. She remembers “feeling in a different mindset at that point.”

Reminder: at the beginning of this, Grace told Ansari to slow down. When he didn't slow down, she went to the bathroom to clear her head, and when she came out of the bathroom, Grace told Ansari that she didn't want to feel forced. Later she told him "No, I don't think I'm ready to do this, I really don't think I'm going to do this." They got dressed, sat on the couch, and he kissed her and stuck his fingers down her throat.

This wasn't a crappy date. It was a sexual assault, at the very least, and I personally think it was rape.

Did Ansari use force? No. But he certainly coerced Grace into sexual acts she told him she didn't want to do. Coercing someone into sexual acts is still sexual assault.

I am appalled that so many women have been in similar situations and have had to chalk this up to usual dating behavior because no one would say to them, "That wasn't crappy sex. You were assaulted, and it's not your fault."

So if you have ever had a crappy date like the one Grace described and no one has ever told you that it's not your fault: It's not your fault. You were sexually assaulted. You shouldn't feel guilty because you didn't do anything wrong.

When we were little, Bart and I loved Star Wars. I'm just old enough to have seen A New Hope in the theater, though definitely during a re-release (probably 1978 or 1979). Our dad is a fan of science fiction, so we saw all three of the originals almost as soon as they hit the theater.

When we got cable tv in the early eighties, any time Star Wars was on HBO, we watched it. We had, get this, an audio tape of A New Hope that we used to listen to all the time. We played Battleship, we listened to the tape. We played legos, we listened to the tape. We had that thing memorized and would say the lines along with the characters.

As adults, we were excited when Lucas Films decided to do Episodes I-III. We were disappointed when they sucked so badly. We were excited when they re-released the remastered with additional scenes episodes IV-VI. We were shocked and annoyed when Lucas sold the franchise to Disney, but excited when Disney announced the new episode would arrive in theaters in December 2015.

It was not long after that announcement that Bart was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. He died in April 2015.

He didn't get to see The Force Awakens.

There are a lot of things I hate about cancer, but one of the things that I hate the most is that Bart won't get to see episodes VII-IX. That probably seems like a strange thing to hate about cancer, but if you knew Bart (and some of you reading this do), you know how much he loved Star Wars.

Several years ago, he bought like 5000 pieces of Legos off of eBay (because he also loved Legos, and he really loved Lego Star Wars). Probably a good 200 of those pieces were Stormtroopers, several Darth Vaders, and a few other characters. I remember the Stormtroopers in particular because 1. he thought the Stormtroopers were the coolest anyway, and 2. I actually built a Lego Stormtrooper honor guard for his memorial service.

In case you doubt me:

Note the Stormtrooper T-shirt and the Star Wars Lego set.

When December 2015 came and The Force Awakens released, we were all pretty excited to see it. Jeff, Liam, and I saw it a few days after it was released, and then the three of us went to see it with my parents a few days after Christmas. While we enjoyed it, we were definitely somber as we left the theater. No one said it, but we were all thinking about the missing person in our midst.

When Carrie Fisher died last year, I cried. The Princess, the General, was gone. I knew then that I would probably cry during episode VIII. I told several people I would be taking plenty of tissues with me.

Last night, Jeff , Liam, and I went to see The Last Jedi. I was very excited and prepared with paper napkins from the lobby. I didn't know when the tears would start, but I knew they would at some point.

And then:

Excitement mixed with sorrow is a weird feeling. It took all of three seconds for tears to run down my face. Happy tears because here it finally is! Sad tears with the (overdramatic but legit) thought that "I'm watching this for my brother." More tears when the third sentence of the opening crawl began with "Only General Organa..."

I think I quit crying about two minutes into the film, but it wasn't the last time. There is a certain scene with Luke Skywalker that immediately made me wonder what Bart would have thought. If I had to guess, it would have involved a jaw drop and use of the word "fuck."

I miss not being able to talk to Bart about the new movies. I wish I could talk to him about Poe and Rey, Han Solo's death, the theories that Ben Solo and Rey were actually twins, how Carrie Fisher's death might affect the last film, the lack of Luke Skywalker in The Force Awakens, what The Last Jedi might lead into for Episode IX, and so many other things.

There are so many things I miss because Bart is gone, but I miss him most acutely when a new Star Wars movie comes out.

I have my opinions about the KKK, white supremacists, Nazis, and terrorists. To put it bluntly, I think their racism makes them awful human beings. I'm pretty vocal about it too, telling all my Facebook friends, twitter and instagram followers, and readers of this blog how I feel. I tell my friends how I feel in real life too.

If I know they agree with me. Fortunately, most of the people I know in my private life are as progressive as I am and feel the same way.

"They say the truth will set you free, but first it will really piss you off. The reason it pisses us off is not simply because we are wrong, but because the truth – the great truth – sets aflame everything we thought we knew about ourselves. It uses us up and spits us out into a pile of something we never imagined could exist in us, let alone thrive at the core of our being.

"Do we believe people of color now?

"Do we believe our silence is compliance? Do we believe our silence is not revolutionary? Do we believe that it is only through pointed, conscientious action that we can break down the system of supremacy from which we all benefit? Do we see that watching slavery movies and feeling bad isn’t doing a goddamn thing?

"Do we believe we are responsible? That we must speak? That we must call out the fifty racists in our families–oh come on. I know they’re there. Even in Portland–that we must RAISE CHILDREN WHO UNDERSTAND AMERICA WAS BUILT ON RACISM?

"We are not post-racial. We have never been equal. And it is an outright delusion to convince ourselves “This is not us.”

"This man [Trump] was brought to power because of his white supremacy, not in spite of it.

"This is a backlash of eight years of black presidency. This is a backlash against people of color rising to power. This is white America reclaiming its Empire.

"This is every race-based immigration law in our history. This is Native America genocide. This is anti-miscegenation laws, the one-drop rule, and American colonization. This is white nostalgia and the rewriting of history.

"This is Jim Crow after slavery. This is the prison pipeline after civil rights. This is redlining and white flight after the GI Bill of WWII.

"This is exactly how America has always wanted it. HAS ALWAYS DONE IT."

(Really, you need to follow the link and read the whole post. Stop and do that now. Come back when you're done.)

I have friends and at least one family member who I know voted for Trump. I talk on social media about how abhorrent bigotry and racism are because it's easy. But I don't like confronting actual human beings about their personal bigotry because I don't like confrontation.

My silence is compliance. I need to be more vocal and active, but other than praying about it (which I believe can help change the situation more than my actions alone), I don't know how.

The first thing I'm going to do is keep reminding fellow Christians that we are commanded to love everyone, even those we see as our enemies or different. We need to pray that we (including our own selves), the Body of Christ, love people as Christ loves them and renounce hatred in our own lives. Loving other people is probably more difficult for me than confronting them, so this challenge is pointed at me more than anyone else.

I'm going to work on gently and lovingly confronting those people in my life who say bigoted and hateful things.

I'm going to continue to work on my own prejudices, facing them and eliminating them.

I'm going to continue to speak against bigotry and hatred on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and in my writing.

And I'm going to continue praying the God will use me to help end bigotry and hatred.

Yesterday, a dear, beloved friend of mine posted a reprint of John Pavlovitz's blog post on his Facebook page regarding the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA this past weekend (August 12, 2017).

One of his friends responded, "I disagree with this pastor. I don't accept that anyone in Charlottesville is racist, a bigot, or anything other than ignorant, ignorant of their history and common beginnings, and ignorant of why there is a statue of a confederate general in the first place. All the more reason to maintain those statues" He continued in a later comment, "To wit: if all we see and speak about is racism and bigotry, then that is all we will discuss."

I suspect he wanted to continue the conversation about states' rights and how a big government was really to blame for the South's succession from the Union before the Civil War; however, I wanted to take the conversation in another direction: "Then let's start talking about sin. About how it's a sin to not love others as Jesus commands us to do. Instead of loving other people, we spout stuff like, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." We teach people that justice is more important than mercy. We teach people that the racial divide started in the Bible and that because the Bible talks about slavery and bigotry, that makes it OK--when the POINT of God and the writers of the Bible talking about those things wasn't to say those things are OK but to show how they don't work. And then to point out the better way, which is loving God and loving one another.

"So sure. Let's stop talking about racism and bigotry, but if we're going to do that, we need to START talking about how racism and bigotry are 100% rooted in sin. You can talk about states' rights and ignorance all you want, but this is willful, blatant ignorance, and people who are that willfully and blatantly ignorant don't want to be educated. They want to feel powerful and privileged and better than people who are different than them.

"So let's start talking about sin with these people then. And see if they respond any differently to THAT than to us talking about how wrong their racism and bigotry are."

People are sinful. As a Christian, I truly believe that. On a personal level, I have to fight against my sinful nature every day. And yes, I even have fight against my own bigotry, prejudice, and privilege that tells me that I'm better than people of color or that I should be scared of the young African American man I encounter when I'm walking my dog at night. I think and feel all these things, all while being horrified when I hear of another young African American man who was shot by some white dude for doing nothing more than walking down the street minding his own business.

In reality, it's the white guy I need to be more afraid of.

I have friends who are African American, Korean, Chinese, Jewish, Muslim, Latino, and Indian. I love hearing stories about their cultures and religions (or lack thereof). I'm saddened and infuriated by what some of them have had to endure because they aren't white and/or Christian.

And I still harbor some prejudices in my heart.

Prejudice and bigotry and thinking we're better than other people is a sin. God told the Jewish people to welcome foreigners into Israel because they were once foreigners and oppressed in Egypt. In Jesus' day, Jewish people hated Samaritans, but Jesus spent time with a Samaritan woman and told a parable about a Samaritan who acted with love towards an injured Jew while his Jewish brothers passed him by. Jesus commands us to love one another, to love our neighbors: "There are countless modern parallels to the Jewish-Samaritan enmity—indeed, wherever peoples are divided by racial and ethnic barriers. Perhaps that’s why the Gospels and Acts provide so many instances of Samaritans coming into contact with the message of Jesus. It is not the person from the radically different culture on the other side of the world that is hardest to love, but the nearby neighbor whose skin color, language, rituals, values, ancestry, history, and customs are different from one’s own."

Honestly, I really want to erase all the stuff in this post about how I have some prejudices still. But I can't, because sin can only die when a light is shining on it. To my friends who are people of color, I'm sorry that I still harbor these prejudices. I am praying that God will help me remove them and if I have ever hurt you by my words or actions, I'm so sorry. I don't want to be like the people in Charlottesville who marched with Nazi flags under the banner of white supremacy. Despite my shortcomings, I stand with you on the side of the oppressed.

Talking about self-care is a big thing right now. Google "self-care" and you'll get 61.2 million hits. That's a lot of people talking about self-care.

Ideas for self-care range from the completely practical (like eating well and staying hydrated) to the new-agey (get in touch with your inner child/spirit guide/beast/etc.).

The world probably doesn't need another post about self-care, but taking care of yourself really is important. So I present to you the n00b's guide to self-care.

Most, if not all, of this is going to be so completely obvious that you'll probably laugh at me or not read any further. These ideas are so basic that a three-year-old understands them.

But be honest: even though these things are obvious, do you do them?

Are you tired? Go to sleep. Is it bedtime? If yes, go to bed. Even if it's 7 p.m. If no, take a nap. Adults don't take enough naps.

Are you hungry? Eat something. If it's time for a meal, have a meal. If it's not time for a meal, have a snack.

Are you bored? Go play. Or read. Do something fun, even if your version of fun is cooking a four course meal or cleaning the bathroom.

Are you thirsty? Get a drink. Water is best.

Are you sad? Do something that makes you happy. Dance. Read a comic book. Talk to a friend or loved one. Or if you need to, cry. It's OK for adults to cry (even you, gentlemen.).

Do you have to go to the bathroom? Then for the love all that's holy, please just go to the bathroom.

These seem so simple. But when was the last time you actually listened to what your body is telling you and then took care of your needs? It's not selfish to take care of yourself in the most basic ways.

What simple things do you do to take care of yourself? Please let me know in the comments!

I work part time as a church secretary. This isn't the first time in my life that I've been a secretary, and if there's one universal thing about being a secretary, it's this: Some days you have a lot of down time.

I'm smart and I work quickly on 75% of the tasks I'm given with few to no mistakes and minimal supervision. I've surprised more than one supervisor with how quickly I can complete tasks. However, working quickly leads to even more down time.

The church I'm at is transitioning from one pastor to another, and the new pastor is still getting moved and settled. Even though he's already told me he won't have much for me to help him with for a few weeks, I still make it a habit to ask him once or twice a week if there's anything he needs me to do. I've asked previous supervisors at other jobs the same thing. And sometimes, there just isn't a lot of work to do.

I'm not complaining about having downtime. I really, truly appreciate that it's a luxury that most people don't have in their jobs.

However, I also feel guilty on the days when I have so little to do that I'm getting paid to just wait for the phone to ring.

This morning, our Visitation Pastor came into the office. He's this adorable eighty-something year old man with an even more adorable eighty-something year old wife. He's a retired United Methodist pastor and was hired two years ago visit church members who are in the hospital, nursing homes, hospice, or long term care at home. He asked me if I was keeping busy, and I told him that with the pastoral transition, there really isn't a lot for me to do right now.

He said, "God gives us each a job to do. Some days you have so much to do that it seems the day will never end. Some days you have very little to do. I think God's OK with us having days when we have very little to do, and we shouldn't feel guilty about being given the opportunity to have a slow day. We shouldn't feel guilty for being paid to do nothing. We should enjoy the rest the slow days give us because there will be busy day later when the day seems like it will never end."

I have never, ever in my life had someone tell me that about down time at work. I told him thank you for telling me that and that I appreciate hearing it and knowing that someone understands.

After he left, I thanked God for the people in my life who He speaks through.

And I'm sharing this with you because I think you need to hear it too. I was shown grace this morning, and I want to share that with you today.

For today's post, I thought it might be fun to write five random facts about me. Here goes:

I can pop my nose. No, not like when people cup both hands over their nose and use their thumbnails to click the backs of their teeth. Like, really, seriously pop my nose. I think it's amusing and it creeps people the hell out.

I've never seen The Princess Bride. I don't want to see it. It doesn't bother me that I haven't seen it. And when people find this out and shout, "You haven't seen The Princess Bride?!" like it's some shortfall in my 80s credentials, I just tell them that I always thought it looked stupid. It usually gets people to huff and walk off, which makes me laugh.

I've never seen The Goonies. I don't want to see it. It doesn't bother me that I haven't seen it. And judging from some conversations I've heard others have about it, it's a movie that's way more entertaining when you're twelve than an adult, and it's kind of sexist and racist. No thanks.

I've never been drunk. Anyone who knows me in real life is probably not a bit surprised about this.

I'm not a big fan of Prince. I can appreciate that he was a brilliant and extremely accomplished writer and musician and will wholeheartedly argue that stance with anyone who says differently. However, I've never been a huge fan of his music, and change the station when most of his songs start playing.

Two or three year ago, I started getting email about meetings from people I didn't know. Then I would get the occasional email from a college in Ontario about registering for classes or something. I also received emails from an animal shelter in Ottowa or Toronto.

I'd usually just delete these emails, figuring that there was another Stephanie Moulton in Ontario who wasn't receiving some of her email, hopefully because someone else had entered her email incorrectly in their database (And not because she got her own email address wrong. Or had given out a bogus address because she didn't want to give out her real email.).

I get these random emails three or four times a year and just delete them, feeling somewhat bad for this other Stephanie Moulton because she's not getting some of her emails, about half of which could be kind of important. (Reminders about meetings? Class work for group projects? Yeah, kind of important.)

I haven't received too many of these emails in 2017, but they all come from places in Ontario. So when I got an email from an esthetics salon in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't surprised:

Skip to last Sunday (July 16). I hadn't been online for a few hours, so I opened my computer to check my email, and had two new emails:

My first reaction: "What's POF?" I opened the email about registration details:

Sunday was two days before our wedding anniversary. Jeff was sitting at the dining room table, and I had an email open about registration details for a dating site. My first response was, "Shit! Delete delete delete!"

Once my heart stopped racing, I thought, "I really should unsubscribe to these emails." I opened the second email informing the other Stephanie that someone was interested in her, scrolled to the unsubscribe link at the bottom, and clicked it, hoping to unsubscribe so that this little issue was remedied. Once at the POF site, I looked at the screen and discovered I needed a password to unsubscribe.

Crap.

At that point I thought, "I really don't want all of these POF emails coming to my inbox, how can I fix this? (thinks about it for a few minutes) Ah! Gmail spam filter!" So I set up the spam filter to send all of the emails to the trash and patted myself on the back.

While I did that, about seven more emails from POF got to my inbox. I trashed those and went about surfing Facebook. Two hours later, my inbox was POF free. Out of curiosity, I checked my trash to see if any more emails had been caught by the spam filter, and discovered that the other Stephanie had twenty new emails from POF. I was really hoping that these guys writing to her were nice and not sending inappropriate pictures to her POF inbox.

Occasionally, gmail will send an important email straight to my trash, so I check my trash a couple of times a week. I checked my trash Tuesday (July 18) afternoon:

One hundred messages. Oh, there are more:

Another thirty eight messages. As of 3:30 a.m. Wednesday (July 19) morning, the other Stephanie has received 138 messages from POF about guys who have contacted her.

I decided to try tracking down the other Stephanie Moulton. Of course my first stop was Facebook, and I found one young woman with that name in Ontario. I have yet to receive a reply. I hope I hear from her soon. As amusing as it is to be receiving emails from a dating site, I'd really like them to stop.

So, um, what would you do in this situation? Comment below! The more entertaining, the better.

It's been almost a month since I wrote about talking about mental illness. I pulled a paragraph out of that post to help highlight what I'm going to write about today:

"As I mentioned earlier, I'm now transitioning from prozac to wellbutrin xl. Having transitioned from celexa to prozac several years ago, I knew what the whole process of switching antidepressants was like, and it's not enjoyable. For the past twelve days I've been even more tired than usual, have found myself becoming impatient easily, eating more sweets than normal, and crying (It was difficult to cry on prozac. I had to be really upset to do so.). It hasn't been quite as awful as being unmedicated was, but it has been difficult. I've had to tell the people closest to me that if I start acting depressed again that this is why."

I've been on Wellbutrin XL for a whole month now. The past four weeks have been difficult. I cried a lot, sometimes over stupid things. I lost almost every ounce of patience that I had. I was extremely irritable. The combination of no patience and irritability made me not want to be around myself; I was really glad that Jeff and Liam were camping so much with Boy Scouts so that they didn't have to be around me so much. I was prepared for all of that though.

What I wasn't prepared for was how absolutely worn out I became each day. Not just tired. Worn out. Like I'd been doing hard, physical labor for eight hours, and feeling like this by nine or ten in the morning. And on top of feeling like this and wanting to sleep all the time, I was having more difficulty than usual falling asleep and sleeping well at night.

Two weeks ago, it got so bad that I decided that I had to make time to rest for a whole day. Fortunately, Jeff and Liam were going to their last weekend of Scout camp and I was able to pull this off without worrying about making sure they got fed.

So I took that whole Saturday off and did what I wanted. If I wanted to sleep, I slept. If I wanted to watch tv, I watched tv. If I wanted to read, I read. I ate when I was hungry, I avoided Facebook and twitter, and spent the day making time to take care of me.

And I felt really selfish and guilty at times. There were at least five times that my brain said, "This is stupid. You have stuff to do around the house and errands that could be run." When that happened, I did what my therapist has instructed me to do: I acknowledged the thought, pushed it away, and told my brain I wasn't going to feel guilty for taking care of myself.

Because that's what rest is, ladies and gentlemen. It's taking care of ourselves. We work eight hours a day, then go home and take care of houses, spouses, and kids. We use our weekends to do housework or play too hard. We stay up too late surfing the web or watching tv. We rely on caffeine to get us through the day instead of plenty of sleep and healthy food. We go too fast, live too hard, and then wonder why we're tired all the time.

And those are normal circumstances. Throw in stressful life circumstances or illnesses and our bodies eventually give out and start demanding more rest. We become worn out, irritable, stressed, depressed, and sick.

Unfortunately, those of us living in the United States have been taught that "Idle hands are the devil's playground." We've been taught a work ethic where we must always be busy. Our jobs ask us to multitask, even though research has shownthat multitaskingis a myth. Even when we have down time, we use it to finish little projects that use just enough brain power and energy that we're not really resting.

And God forbid that we actually rest. If we try to do that, we get guilt from our culture, acquaintances, friends, family members, and even our own brains. Sometimes it's just easier to keep going, no matter how tired we are, than to take the time our bodies need to rest.

I can't do that anymore. My personality demands alone time to recharge. My body demands rest. My brain chemistry is crying out for me to listen to my body and stop.

So I'm making a choice to be more aware of when I'm tired and need to be resting. That Saturday was successful. I did it again on Sunday. I will probably try it again on Sunday. I may not be able to do this every week, but I'm going to do my best to make a day of rest a habit and I'm going to work on not feeling guilty about taking care of myself.

I encourage you to do the same thing. If you are a Christian, remember that we are commanded to observe a Sabbath day. God created the Sabbath for us, so that we can rest and recharge.

There's nothing shameful about resting. There's nothing shameful about admitting you need to rest. So take the time you need to rest. Quit multitasking. Sleep. Go slowly. Rest.

Not putting shopping carts in the corrals. Yes, I know, it's hot/cold/rainy/etc. outside, and the cart corral is five spaces away from you. Too bad. Just too bad. It's not OK in any way, shape, or form to leave the shopping cart a) in another parking space, b) propped crookedly on the island cement and the parking lot, c) just outside the cart corral.

My new "favorite" is people who only have a few bags and don't need the cart to get the bags to the car, so they leave the carts inside. Like this:

And finally, how lazy do you have to be to leave the shopping cart in the parking lot AT ALDI?

Badly parked cars. Cars parked inside the lines, but one side is RIGHT ON THE YELLOW PARKING LINE. Cars sharing two parking spots. Cars parked diagonally, either inside the lines of their own space or across two or more spaces.

Honestly, it takes every fiber of my being to not take pictures and Facebook shame people like this. It takes thirty seconds to repark the car if you're not doing it correctly, so just take the extra time and do it right. Please.

Being late all the time. I admit, I'm one of those people who runs early for just about everything. Running right on time for an appointment makes me antsy, and if I think I'm going to be even two minutes late for something, I call the other person to let them know.

That there are people in the world who are constantly late for everything drives me nuts. Please don't get me wrong--if someone is late a couple of times because they lost track of time, I understand that that happens. That happens to all of us. But I know some people who are late to everything because they just are. It's rude and irritating. It shows me that that person thinks that my time isn't as valuable as their time.